MetaVox for Camel Audio's Alchemy is built around the exceptional overtone and throat singing of Gareth Lubbe, a true master of his craft. As Gareth is actually a professional orchestral viola player this library also contains several patches with viola sounds, the viola being a string instrument with a great resemblance to the human voice. During the recording session we also recorded duets of Gareth singing and playing the viola at the same time, these sample make for some more beautiful and wondrous sounds in Alchemy.

There are also patches with female vocals, using samples which were recorded during a recent session with Frauke Albert, a renown German vocalist (soprano), working mainly in the field of contemporary music.

As an additional string instrument some sounds also use violin samples, another instrument which has a very voice-like character and blends beautifully with the vocals sounds in this library.

Besides using the original vocal and string samples (and resynthed derivatives thereof) for making the Alchemy patches, I am fascinated in the microcosmic interior of harmonics, so I produced quite a few electronic derivatives of the samples, created by e.g. detaching the harmonics from the root note, then deleting the root note only leaving the harmonics which are then further processed, timestretched, spectralized, tuned to a tempered scale and more.

So you will find a broad spectrum of sounds reaching from meditative overtone drones to fascinating throat singing to otherworldly vocal soundscapes, from technoid and pulsating sequencers to beautiful vocal pads and textures, from warm string pads with an orchestral character to experimental noises from a different universe.

You can view/download the PDF for this library with more details, the licence agreement, some pics and the patchlist, including playing tips and descriptions for each patch here.

MetaVox Specs::

1.8 Gigabyte of original samples (wav) and resynthed files (.aaz).

56 patches with 8 variations each in Alchemy's Remix Pad, all Performance Controllers and both x/y-pads are assigned for each patch.

Please note: This sound library requires the full version of Alchemy (version 1.55 and higher). It does not work with the Alchemy player version.

All samples in this library were recorded with 3 Neumann microphones in L-C-R in 48 kHz/24-bit, a U87 as the center mic - a stereo set of KM 184 for L-R.

As in all my soundsets for Alchemy I make extensive use of Alchemy's complex modulation possibilities and filters, often intermodulating LFOs/MSEGs/sequencers with each other and assigning numerous parameters to a single Performance Controller. This enables the user to deeply interact with the sounds and shape it according to his needs and preferences. Also the patches can serve as a starting point for the user's own creations when loading new samples into them and then using the pre-assigned controllers and snapshots in the Remix Pad.

All audio demos were produced entirely with Alchemy using only patches from MetaVox, no post-processing was applied apart from a Limiter on the Outputs and some volume automation if several instances of Alchemy were used in a track. Only one demo uses 3rd party reverb as mentioned in the track title.